


Good Days and Bad Days

by evilwriter37



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Comfort, Crying, Dealing with Emotions, Drama, Gen, Grief, referenced character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-07
Updated: 2018-09-07
Packaged: 2019-07-08 00:02:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,083
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15918918
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/evilwriter37/pseuds/evilwriter37
Summary: Allura finally allows herself to feel her grief over Lotor’s death. Lance is there to comfort her.





	Good Days and Bad Days

**Author's Note:**

  * For [turianjournalist16](https://archiveofourown.org/users/turianjournalist16/gifts).



Allura tuned out the voices in her helmet’s earpiece until they were nothing but a buzz. This journey to Earth was leaving her with nothing to do but think, and she was thinking about one thing, one  _ person _ in particular:

Lotor. 

She hadn’t had time to grieve, to take everything in. There had been the battle, and then trying to keep Shiro alive, but now she was left with time to feel all the emotions that she’d been keeping buried in favor of more important things. They came like a real pain in her chest, like a hammer smashing against her, cracking her ribs to pieces to get at her heart.

She’d felt  _ something  _ for him. Whether it had truly been love was debatable. The word seemed almost silly to apply to the situation. She hadn’t known him for very long, and had been with him for even less time. Whatever she’d felt though, it had been strong, real, and so was the betrayal. That had ripped into her with sharp, cold teeth, and instead of blood welling out, there had come anger, fury, and she’d… she’d killed him.

She certainly didn’t regret it, not for the atrocious things he’d done, but it hurt that he’d done all that anyway. She’d thought he could become a good person and throw off his Galra upbringing, but he couldn’t. Evil was rooted in him and had been since conception.

“Allura.”

Allura lifted her head, pulling herself from her thoughts. For a moment there was no voice, and she thought maybe she’d just imagined it.

“Allura?” The voice was real: in her earpiece and belonging to Lance.

“Hm?”

“You went silent over there,” he said, sounding genuinely concerned. “You okay?”

“Oh, sorry.” Allura shook her head a little as if to get the thoughts and feelings of grief off of her, like they were in her hair.  “Yes. I’m alright.” Her lie didn’t sound very convincing to even herself.

“You don’t sound it,” Lance said. “Hey, guys, Allura and I are gonna be on a separate channel for a bit, okay?”

“Why?” Hunk asked. “Is everything okay? Allura?”

Allura’s face flushed. She hated that it was so obvious that something wasn’t right with her, that her teammates were taking notice. She thought it was sweet of Lance that he wanted to check in on her though. She just hoped it wasn’t something he would end up telling everyone about. That is, if  _ she  _ even told the truth about what was going on.

“I’ll be fine.”

“Yep, moving to a separate channel,” Lance said a little firmly, and Allura looked out her cockpit to see him piloting the Red Lion next to hers. There were more questions, but the voices cut out, and it was just her and Lance. 

“So, what’s bothering you?”

“Nothing,” Allura answered, staring straight ahead. She couldn’t afford time to be vulnerable. Though… time was all they really had at the moment. She sighed. “Alright, something.”

“It’s Lotor, isn’t it?” Lance asked empathetically.

Allura nodded before she remembered that Lance couldn’t see her. She cleared her throat, lowered her head, looking at some of the dials on the control panel.

“Um, yes.”

“Are you regretting what happened? Having second thoughts?”

“No, I just…” She sighed again. “I miss him,” she admitted. 

She could almost picture Lance nodding as he hummed in understanding. “It makes sense. You guys got pretty close.”

“Yeah.”

Now there was an uncomfortable silence between them, a silence filled with some sort of tension, a tension that had to be broken.

“He was bad though,” Allura blurted out. “I mean, he did bad things. He had to be put down.” She spoke quickly, and as the silence stretched on after, she realized that she’d sounded like she was trying to convince herself more than anyone else.

_ I don’t regret it. I don’t! _

Or maybe she did. Fury had consumed her and she hadn’t given Lotor a chance to explain. But Romelle had explained enough. What he’d been doing with the Alteans and the colonies was horrid. He’d claimed it had been to save them, but how? All he’d wanted was Quintessence. 

“You feel like you should have given him time to explain, don’t you?” Lance questioned. Quiznak. How could he read her like a digital file?

“Maybe,” Allura told him. “Things just happened so fast.  _ Too  _ fast. We’d gotten close and been able to talk things over before. I feel like I should have maybe allowed him to talk then.”

“It was your people, Allura,” Lance said. “You had every right to be as angry as you were.”

“Is that what you think?” Allura asked. “Or are you just telling me what I want to hear?” There was nothing to be done with the controls for now. She sat back in her chair, rested her head back, closed her eyes. Despite the constant nothingness of travel, she was exhausted. Maybe it was the emotions wearing down on her. It could be good for her to talk about this.

“It’s what I think,” Lance let her know. “Hell, I was angry too. Here you were thinking that you and Coran were the last Alteans and he just had them stashed away somewhere without telling you! And he was draining their life force for his own gain!” Lance’s voice raised in anger, and that same emotion flickered in Allura’s stomach. It died before it could turn into a full flame though. She’d felt anger for so long it was almost like she’d run out. She’d been masking everything else with that, and now without it she was left feeling vulnerable and raw.

Silence.

“Are you… are you not still angry with him?”

“I’m still angry with him, Lance,” Allura said tiredly. She put a hand over her eyes. “It’s just like I can’t feel it anymore. Like I’ve nearly run out of anger. Or, at least the energy to express it.”

“What else are you feeling?”

“Guilt,” Allura said. She lowered her hand, straightened in her seat and absently surveyed the stars around them. “I barely gave him a chance to explain and I killed him.” Her voice choked up on the word “killed”. She hadn’t said it out loud before. She’s think it to herself, curled up in the dark in the cockpit of her Lion, a secret statement for just her and the cold emptiness of space. But now she’d said it, and it hurt. It was like she’d taken a laser blast to the chest. Cracks formed, widened, ached. Emotion spilled from them, threatening to sweep her away. 

She broke apart.

“Lance, I killed him!” she cried, leaning over, putting her head in her hands. “I killed him and I never wanted to! I never thought I would have to! I miss him, I miss him!”

For long moments Allura forgot that she wasn’t alone. She just cried, sobbed, tears spilling down her cheeks. There was breathable air in the Lions, so she removed her helmet, letting her hair fall over her face in a white mass. She set her helmet in her lap, her shoulders shaking. Tears dripped down her face and onto her hands. 

“Allura” - Lance’s voice was soft - “you did what you had to do. We all did. It wasn’t just you who did it. We all did. As a team. We defeated another evil like we’re supposed to. Defenders of the Universe, you know?”

Allura shook her head. “But I-I-I didn’t want us t-to defe-defend it from  _ him! _ ” She wasn’t bothering to try to piece herself back together at the moment. She just let the shards of herself lay in the void to hopefully be retrieved later. She just needed this moment of feeling, of existing with her emotions instead of repressing them like she had been. 

Another silence, probably Lance thinking of the best thing to say to comfort her.

“Betrayal hurts,” he told her. “And you’re allowed to let it hurt. You loved him and-”

“I didn’t love him,” Allura denied vehemently, a growl in her voice. “I didn’t.” Again, she sounded like she was convincing herself. 

“Alright, sorry. I just thought- well, never mind. Whatever the case, you felt something for him and he took advantage of that.”

Allura swallowed past the ache in her throat. “He used me.”

It seemed that Lance had nothing to say to that, but it was alright, because Allura continued on.

“He used me like he did the other Alteans. For power. If we hadn’t discovered his plot in time…” Allura nearly shuddered. It would have been worse had she found all this out later in life. She and Lotor could have been married. For political reasons of course. Still, it could have happened, and she could have been feeling a lot more hurt than she was now. 

Allura cried a little more, and Lance had nothing to say. She wanted to hug someone right now, but there was no one in her Lion with her. She was alone, as she was often used to feeling. Of all people, she wanted a hug from her father… 

From Lotor.

She wanted him to wrap her in his strong arms and tell her that everything was alright, that Romelle was lying. He could have taken her to the colonies, shown her the truth, and she wouldn’t have killed him. They could have talked about it, and then they would have held each other and kissed the way they had in the Quintessence Field with just the two of them.

“I did love him,” Allura realized. Her voice came out hoarsely.

Lance said nothing to that. Maybe he just didn’t know what to say.

Allura sniffled, wiped at her eyes with one hand. “I loved him and now he’s gone.” She began putting her hair in its customary bun. “Just like everyone else I love.”

“You’ve still got us,” Lance said supportively. “And we love you Allura. All of us. Even Keith.”

Allura finished her bun, smiled a little. Lance was right of course. She had Coran and her teammates. She may have lost someone close to her yet again, but she hadn’t lost all of them. That helped the pain a little bit, helped her begin to pick up the pieces of herself and put them back in order.

“And look. Grieving isn’t something you finish in a day,” Lance said, and Allura realized how much wisdom there seemed to be in him at this moment. He’d probably experienced loss before, but now wasn’t the time to ask about it. “It takes a while. It gets better, it gets worse. You’ll have good and bad days with it, even as it gets farther in the past. People say it’ll scar, but it never really does.”

“I see your point,” Allura said, feeling dejected. “The pain is always there.”

“But not without good things,” Lance countered. “Good days, remember? This just happens to be one of your bad ones. It’s okay to have them.”

Allura took a deep breath, nodded her head though Lance couldn’t see her. She wiped at her face one more time, then put her helmet back on.

“Thank you, Lance.” She almost wanted to apologize for making him do emotional labor like this, but she was more grateful for it than anything else, grateful for him. It left her wondering what she would have done without him. Crying on her own didn’t seem like an ideal situation.

“Of course! You have a lot on your plate, Allura, and a lot has happened to you, so, any time. It’s not good to keep everything inside like that.”

“I know it’s not,” Allura responded. “I just kept it buried because of everything that had been going on. And then I had a free moment to think and it all came out.”

“It’ll happen,” Lance said. “Don’t worry about it.” She could almost hear him smiling. “I’ll be here for you, on both good days and bad days.”

Allura had it in herself to smile too. She was sure that Lance would.

“So, you ready to talk to everyone else again?” Lance asked.

“Yes. Yes I am.”

“Alright. Here we go.”

Chatter filled Allura’s earpiece, and this time she didn’t tune it out. She welcomed it with a smile. Maybe it could help her get through her bad day, and she would use it until she had a good day, and now she was sure that she would. 


End file.
